


The Meeting of Old Enemies

by whentheynameyoujoy



Series: The Lies They Tell [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Violence, F/M, Gen, Mild Language, Mystery, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pre-Relationship, Second War with Voldemort, Spy Draco Malfoy, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-18 12:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13099767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whentheynameyoujoy/pseuds/whentheynameyoujoy
Summary: Three years after their Potions Master got his most sadistic idea yet, the Trio lays their hands on a peculiar letter.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series of ten self-contained fics taking place during an altered Deathly Hallows timeline. It features slow burn Dramione down the road, so if that's not your thing, you've been warned.

“Hermione, are you sure you’re not coming?”

Stirring behind the large table in the cramped room she turned into a research library, Hermione raised her eyes from the book she was ostentatiously reading. “As sure now as I was an hour ago, Harry. Or in the morning. Or yesterday, for that matter.” She turned a page. “Try asking me again in five minutes, maybe I’ll have a different answer for you.”

They’d had this exact same conversation so many times over the past few days, Hermione was certain she knew each individual step by heart at this point.

_And here it comes._

Harry threw his hands up in indignation. “How can you be so flippant about this? Don’t you see how important it could turn out to be? I mean look at it!” He slammed the piece of parchment on the table for the umpteenth time this week and pinned Hermione down with an expectant look.

Written in artful cursive, the note read: _  
_

 

 

> _“Arisen from the fens in the seventeenth turn of the year ninety-two, the purest among them by his own estimation stands forgotten in the heart of his home when summer shakes autumn’s hand in the last light of the dying day.”_

Harry stabbed his finger in the middle of the paper. “Someone took the trouble of putting this into my pocket. A coded message, Hermione! A message I most definitely didn’t have before we got into that skirmish! That means it’s something important, something that could seriously help us!”

“Or something that could land us bollocks deep in trouble.” Ron was standing in the doorway, a look on his face saying that although he was prepared to humour his friend, that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. “You said it yourself: one of the guys in Death Eater masks we fought last week stuffed the note inside your pocket. That could very well spell we’re about to walk into a trap.”

Seeing Harry gear up for what Ron knew as much as Hermione did was yet another rant, he quickly raised his hands: “Look mate, I know you have a really good feeling about this but honestly, neither of us knows what anything in that message means. I’m just saying, maybe you should calm down until we have at least some idea what we’re dealing with.”

“But that’s precisely it, Ron! We _have_ to go now!” His voice urgent, Harry seemed desperate to convince them. “ _When summer shakes autumn’s hand in the last light of the dying day_! The September equinox! That’s today!”

Sighing, Hermione marked the last place where she had truly been paying attention, and closed the book. “All you know with absolute certainty, Harry, is that someone on You-Know-Who’s side wants you to be somewhere by the sunset of the 23rd September for some reason. Call me overly demanding, but that’s not exactly a well of information.”

“It wouldn’t be if that really was all we knew, Hermione!” Sensing an opportunity to beat her at her own game of logical analysis, Harry proceeded to lay out his reasoning: “The clearest part of the note is obviously the one that talks about _the purest among them by his own estimation_. That has got to be Voldemort, Hermione, it just has to! Think about it: Voldemort’s a half-blood, yet he’s spearheading a movement for pureblood supremacy! There’s no way this isn’t about him!”

“That’s quite a reach, Har…”

“And then there’s the part about him being forgotten in his home.” He laughed happily. “Nobody in Little Hangleton has the faintest that the greatest monster of our time comes from there!”

“Wasn’t You-Know-Who born in a London orphanage?”

“And what about the seventeen turns of 1992?” Ron cut in. “Maybe I missed those additional sixteen since it was all so stressful back then, but I don’t recall living through our second year seventeen times.”

“And I don’t recall there being any fens in Little Hangleton or London.”

“I don’t know about the fens,” Harry was loath to admit, “but 1992 is the year when the Chamber of Secrets was opened. Again, a direct link to Voldemort. And don’t forget, the Basilisk’s main purpose was to kill Muggle-borns, so we’re coming back to the pureblood thing.” Harry looked like he was close to grabbing Hermione by the shoulders and trying to shake some sense into her. “It all fits!”

Giving up, she reached for the tome again. “Yes, Harry, if you ignore half the note and really, _really_ want it to fit, then it all perfectly fits.”

He turned beet-red and Ron quickly chimed in: “I’m voting for You-Know-Who just trying his hand at writing poetry, and being very very bad at it.” Seeing Harry and Hermione shoot him a look of disbelief, he countered: “What? The fighting has been pretty much at standstill for the last month, and even the evillest wizard alive must get bored if he has nothing to do.”

“I’m sure You-Know-Who has no shortage of pastimes to while away his time, Ron.” Hermione took a pencil and circled a passage that seemed promising. “Things like random killing or torturing innocents come to mind.”

“Come on, Hermione, he’s been doing that for two wars in a row. No matter how much you like a hobby, it _will_ become dreadfully dull if you do it all the time.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So what, you think You-Know-Who decided to take the gloves off by flooding the world with bad writing?”

“In a way, yeah. Personally, I’d say he holds regular reading sessions where Death Eaters have to listen carefully and take notes, and if they can’t answer all the questions about poetic symbolism, then sorry mate, it’s Avada for you.” Nodding sagely, Ron concluded: “Some poor sod just slipped the paper to Harry to get us to feel sorry for him. Sort of like ‘Hey, you think _you_ have it bad? Check out what we have to deal with.’”

And that was when Harry clearly reached his limit. “Shut it, both of you!” he yelled, pulling them up short. “It’s been over a year since we left Hogwarts to bring Voldemort down, and we’re no closer to achieving that now than we were then. The hunt for Horcruxes is going nowhere, we still haven’t even the slightest idea how to destroy them, and the only thing of consequence we’ve managed to do is that we’ve been delivering our reports to Moody on time. Meanwhile the war goes on, people are dying, and whenever the Order has to vacate yet another safe house I’m dreading to ask if it was someone we know this time.”

If it weren’t for the Horcrux around Hermione’s neck, darkening her mood like a heavy storm on the horizon threatening to break, she would have gotten up from the chair, walked over to Harry, and made every effort to assure him he was doing the absolute best he could in their circumstances.

As it was, though, the only thing she felt was the rising irritation at his presumption that she needed to have any of this explained.

Harry jabbed a finger at her. “You two may be fine with sitting here and having nothing better to do than crack jokes, but this letter could be the first real clue we’ve stumbled upon since we found Regulus’ locket, and I sure as hell am not wasting it just because we may not have all the details figured out!”

Taking in Harry’s dishevelled appearance, Hermione had to supress the urge to clarify exactly how many details he managed to not figure out. “You can march into Little Hangleton and expect to find You-Know-Who’s secret stash of Goblin gold, complete with detailed instructions on how to do away with him, but I’m afraid you’re going to be terribly disappointed.” Leaning back in the chair, she propped the book up on her thighs and finished by saying: “Which is why I feel perfectly at ease staying here and letting the two of you handle this by yourselves.”

Harry’s expression hardened. “Fine. You stay in the safe house and keep an eye on the locket while we go and check this out. But don’t you dare be mad when it turns out I was right all along and you missed out on something important just because you were too stubborn to give it a chance.” And with that, he shouldered his way past Ron and marched out of the room.

Schooling her face into a mask of polite indifference, Hermione turned a page. “That went well, didn’t it?”

But Ron crossed his arms and cast her a disapproving look. “Would it kill you to just nod along for once?”

That caught her so much by surprise she almost dropped the book.

Ron shrugged. “It’s not like we’re debating the finer points of breaking down the Death Eater network, or how many people dying it will take to win a battle.” Fixing her with a meaningful glare, he added: “Harry hasn’t been handling stuff well lately and this is the first thing in a good long while he feels could actually bring us some results. So what does it matter if he’s right or not?”

Hermione opened her mouth, ready to argue the point, but Ron shook his head wearily before she got a single word out. “I’ll take the Horcrux after we come back. It’s been a while since I did my fair share of snapping and sniping around this place.”

Before Hermione could retort that she was old enough to know when it was about time someone took over for her, thank you very much, he turned around and left the room to follow Harry outside.


	2. Chapter 2

With a loud bang, Hermione closed the book she had been pretending to read and flung it on the table as soon as the sound of them Disapparating shook the tiny one-storey cottage.

She hadn’t expected to start the night anywhere near this put out.

Deep down, she knew that she went too far and behaved unreasonably. After all, it worked entirely to her advantage that Harry had come to a wrong conclusion and dashed off in the exact opposite direction to the one he should have been heading. If anything, it saved her from having to come up with an excuse as to why she suddenly needed to go out for an evening stroll when everybody and their kneazle knew that her after-dinner hours were reserved for research only. Being rather crap at making elaborate lies seem believable, any attempt at talking her way around this would have probably resulted in Harry and Ron tagging along, and she couldn’t have that.

But sod it! Harry didn’t puzzle it out, he wasn’t right, and therefore had no business acting all snooty as if he had solved some great riddle that she was too obstinate to see!

Hermione grabbed the chain that held Regulus’ locket, snatched it up, and roughly pulled it over her head. The moment the Horcrux lost contact with her body, her mind cleared and she felt immeasurably lighter; lighter and a lot more embarrassed.

It was no secret that Harry was getting increasingly hopeless with their task. One had to be blind to miss it in the way he alternated between spurts of frantic activity when he would investigate anything that seemed like a clue or get the three of them involved in one Order mission or another “so that they wouldn’t lose their edge”, and the progressively more frequent times when he would just sit around the cottage, doing nothing and staring dejectedly into space.

But Merlin, she deserved a reprieve as much as he did. A sense of uselessness wasn’t a bitter pill that only Harry had to swallow; Hermione knew it all too well herself since the one thing that had always come to her rescue now failed to provide any help whatsoever. Harry’s feelings of failure had nothing on the hopelessness Hermione battled every single night when she sat down with her books and tried yet again to find an answer she had an increasing suspicion wasn’t there.

And the worst part of it all, between Harry’s depression and Ron’s regular bouts of homesickness, she gathered that it simply wouldn’t be right to burden either of them with the ghosts that haunted _her_ each time the weight of the Horcrux descended on her mind. Whenever Harry came down with a case of the blues, he had Ron to rely on and Ron had him and Hermione was there for both of them, but when it came to her issues, she decided it was best to soldier through them on her own.

So yes, maybe she could have told them the truth and maybe they could have done this together, and yes, Harry most definitely had demons which this little journey could have helped exorcize, but Merlin, Hermione had as many of them as he did and she needed a break too.

The sound of the kitchen clock striking seven pulled her out of her musings, and when she peeked out of the window, she saw that twilight was already falling; she was cutting it close. Shoving the locket inside the drawer of her study table, she took the spare vial of Dittany that was kept there and put it into the pocket of her jeans. Then, she quickly cast a locking charm on the drawer, and after thinking about it for a moment, added a concealment charm on top of it. Protective spells covered the entire forest cottage from roof to foundations; it would have to be a stroke of spectacularly bad luck if every single one of them stopped working in the one night when their piece of You-Know-Who’s soul was left unguarded. One could never be too careful, though, especially if the final outcome of the war hinged on it.

Hermione closed the library door behind her, ran down the short narrow hallway and through the main entrance, and once outside, pulled up a mental image of the black-and-white photograph she’d managed to hunt out in _Settlements of Medieval England_. Praying that it was up to date and she wouldn’t end up missing a limb, she took out her wand and turned at the spot.

One second of a dizzying journey later, she found herself standing at the junction between a narrow alley and a small square where a harvest market was in full swing. Sticking the wand inside her sleeve and clutching the edge of the fabric in her fist so that the wand wouldn’t fall out, Hermione took a step back into the alley and looked around the place she’d Apparated to.

Under the dark purple sky, several rows of stalls stretched from one side of the square to the other, unbroken but for the very big, very old fountain that was sprawled in the dead centre, bathing in the orange light of freshly turned on streetlamps. At the end closer to her, people were idling around by tall round tables, smiling talking, and drinking from plastic cups. Loud with the noises of business and the occasional car driving by, the area was full of shoppers running errands, meeting up with friends, or just wandering aimlessly from one shop to another.

There was nobody Hermione recognized.

She was smart enough to know that he wouldn’t be impatiently pacing to and fro in plain sight for everyone to see. Most likely he either hadn’t arrived yet, or was lying low in one of the alleyways leading to the market square, on the lookout and waiting for the best opportunity to make his approach. Still, she decided to go over everything one last time to make sure she hadn’t followed in Harry’s footsteps and bungled something up.

 

 

 

> _“Arisen from the fens in the seventeenth turn of the year ninety-two, the purest among them by his own estimation stands forgotten in the heart of his home when summer shakes autumn’s hand in the last light of the dying day.”_

 

When Harry burst into the kitchen a week ago, half-naked and brandishing the note he’d fished out of his trousers while getting ready to jump into the shower, one particular phrase caught Hermione’s eye immediately.

 

 

 

> _“The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was founded by four wizards and witches who – if later historical accounts are to be believed – most certainly earned the right to be called one of the greatest magical practitioners of all time: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and last but most assuredly not least Salazar Slytherin, the purest among them by his own estimation.”_

It wasn’t hard to put together the rest.

There were several places in the Fens of Eastern England that claimed the dubious honour of being the birthplace of Salazar Slytherin, but only one of them made its presence as such known in the seventeenth century, or had any connection to 1692, the year when the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was officially enacted. It was also the year when a certain influential wizarding family gave vent to their frustration at having been made to bow down to the inferior Muggles, and commissioned a rather unsubtle piece of public art to be placed in the small town of Old Ormarsh – the very same place where Slytherin was allegedly born and where Hermione stood right now.

Few wizards and witches had a reason to know what amounted to little more than a few obscure titbits of history trivia, let alone be able to recognize them in a coded form and connect the dots – unless said wizard or witch happened to be a fanatical reader of one Bathilda Bagshot whose often overlooked pet project was littered with footnotes containing all of this in a convenient, ready-to-assemble package.

There was only one person who knew about Hermione’s crippling obsession with _Hogwarts: A History_ , and at the same time was both familiar enough with the book and sufficiently smart to use it for the purpose of constructing a coded message tailored specifically for her.

Only one person who had a reason to contact her this surreptitiously.

Hermione wondered if the code was faked as a note to Harry precisely because its author knew her best friend would set out on a wild goose chase and unknowingly let the two of them settle their business in peace.

Well if peace was what he was hoping for, he was in for a very nasty surprise.

Taking a deep breath to pluck up her courage, Hermione separated herself from the wall she’d been leaning against, stepped out of the alley and into the square, and with an air of purpose started to weave her way through the shoppers who roamed from one stall to another, enjoying the smell of autumn produce and buying dry flowers, candles, or ceramics. She lowered her eyes to keep the bustle from dredging up memories of the numerous times her mother took her to one such market or another, oohing and aahing with her at the assorted trinkets her pre-Hogwarts self didn’t need but wanted anyway. Instead of dwelling on the past that would likely never return, Hermione resolutely headed for the very centre of the square where the huge dilapidated fountain was hideously at odds with the otherwise well-tended area.

She kept her head down the entire way, not looking up once until the foot of the fountain invaded her view and forced her to stop.

It was one of the great feats of cosmic irony that a statue built in honour of the one Hogwarts Founder who detested Muggle-borns more than anything else in the world ended up standing in the middle of what eventually became a purely Muggle town. Since none of the shoppers were paying attention to the sculpture or commenting on its breath-taking repulsiveness, Hermione figured there must have been a Ministry official charged with coming here every couple of decades and renewing the concealment charm that kept the stone figure of Salazar Slytherin from revealing itself to the Muggle public.

Judging from its state of disrepair, that was the extent of anyone’s efforts to maintain it.

The structure was approximately ten feet tall and about five feet in diameter. The finer features of Slytherin’s face had succumbed to the elements a long time ago and the only thing that remained recognizable was the long thin beard reaching all the way to the ground. His left arm had crumbled away, but the right one was raised in a threatening gesture, the wand it used to hold no doubt erupting with a beam of dark magic. His legs were planted in a thick artificial bog swarming with carved snakes, some rising above the surface to gaze admiringly at their master, others poised to strike at the unsuspecting Muggle passer-by.

And below, under Slytherin’s name engraved in the granite edge, caved-in letters half clogged with dirt spelled the name of the person who had this monstrosity built.

 

CORVUS

MALFOY

 

“Hello, Granger.”

Hearing his smooth, self-assured voice for the first time in over a year shook Hermione more than she’d thought possible. Frozen in place, she felt her palms get sweaty and her heart speed up, its mad beating pushing everything out until the only thing that remained was the tingling sensation that came with knowing he was directly behind her.

Maybe she should have brought Harry and Ron along after all.

But then a hand crept up to touch her shoulder, and with that hint of contact, so fleeting it was barely there, the noises of commotion returned and she was slammed back into reality, all thoughts of uncertainty forgotten.

As soon as his fingers met the soft fabric of her flannel shirt, Hermione whipped around. Letting her wand slide from her sleeve and into her palm, she grabbed him by the lapel of his no doubt obscenely expensive blazer jacket and forced everything out of her mind but the memory of the remote cave she discovered with her father while vacationing on the coast of Meirionnydd. A loud pop pierced Hermione’s ears in that very moment and then there was nothing but the whirl of movement, the bone-snapping pressure as she was crushed into his chest, and the seeming eternity of there being nothing but a pair of slate-grey eyes widened in surprise, staring directly into hers.

The second her feet hit the uneven rocky surface, Hermione punched Draco Malfoy in the chest with as much force as she could muster and sent him tumbling to the ground.

“What the…!”

The feeling of magic coursing through her body and leaving through the tip of her wand was intoxicating, and as the bursting light hurtled towards him, Hermione felt in control for the first time in months.

By that point, Malfoy had gotten his own wand out and, scrambling to his feet, managed to deflect her stinging jinx at the very last second. Judging from the open cut on his right hand, he’d hurt himself while trying to break the fall but for the life of her Hermione couldn’t bring herself to give a single solitary damn.

“Granger, wai…!”

Hermione waved her arm and the cave lit up with the golden blast of pimple jinx, defused by the silver of Malfoy’s shield charm once more. The sheer strength of her rage kept pushing him back and out of the dodge, to her right.

“Damn it, you…!”

“Tarantallegra!” She didn’t come to listen to whatever mountain of verbal diarrhoea it was that he wished oh so eagerly to share with her; she came to find out if it was indeed possible to tear somebody a new arsehole.

Malfoy deflected the spell again. “I’m here to help!”

Casting a fast knee-reversal hex and then a tickling charm in rapid succession, Hermione snorted. Draco Malfoy coming to help, that would indeed be a new one. Malfoy wasn’t the kind of person who helped people; he was the kind who tricked them into helping him, and then misused the result of their good intentions in the most horrifying manner possible.

The first jinx was dissolved by his shield charm yet again, while the second one met only air as he jumped to her right and out of the way. “I have information!”

“I bet you do,” she deadpanned and went for the leg-locker curse.

The silver-blue beam hit Malfoy’s shield and spilled harmlessly across it like it was just a little bit of water. “I want to join the Order!”

Hermione had figured that much out; there was no other conceivable reason for him to be here. The question remained whether he was doing it out of a sincere desire to switch sides, or if he was just pretending to defect in order to improve his standing with You-Know-Who by learning valuable information and getting close to a friend of Harry Potter’s.

Knowing Malfoy, he probably wanted to keep as many options open as possible to make sure he’d be on the winning side no matter what.

“Levicorpus!”

“Protego!”

“Expulso!”

“Protego!”

“Confringo!”

“Protego!”

“Stop hiding and fight, you revolting snake!” Hermione was quickly getting tired of pummelling him with spell after spell, only for them to be swallowed by the shield he holed up behind like the loathsome funk that he was. The previous cold-bloodedness of her anger was starting to ebb away and was being promptly replaced by red-hot fury.

“For fuck’s sake, you stupid cow, just list…!”

 _“I DON’T CARE!”_ Hermione screeched so hard her voice broke on the last syllable, and shouted the first curse that entered her mind, not even bothering to cast it properly.

This time, the spell found a target.

Letting out a blood-curling scream, Malfoy jerked violently to his left and then everything went pitch-black and dead-quiet.

Feeling her next incantation die on her lips, Hermione stopped mid-movement, all of a sudden enveloped in complete darkness. The ferocity and sense of purpose that were dictating her every move just a second ago vanished as if they had never existed. Hearing nothing but the sound of her own exhausted wheezing, Hermione was suddenly struck with the realization that she had absolutely no idea what to do next.

What on Merlin’s ever-loving earth had just happened?


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione blinked but when her eyes opened a split second later the cave remained changed in the exact same way as before. There were no more sparks made by the crashing of spells, no more Malfoy or the sound of his feet slipping as he struggled to keep his footing while retreating from her furious onslaught. All that was left was a darkness so thick it looked like sewn from a rich cloth, the prickling of sharp rocks under her sneakers, the dank smell of an enclosed space too long abandoned, and worst of all, the complete and utter unbroken silence.

Unseeing, Hermione stared into the dark, cold dread gripping her tighter and tighter as it gradually dawned on her what this abrupt peace and quiet might mean.

She forced her mouth to open and tried to call Malfoy by name, but nothing came out. And more importantly, Malfoy himself wasn’t making any noise whatsoever. Why was he so bloody silent?

In that moment, it was as if Hermione’s senses conspired to make her painfully aware of each passing flicker of each passing second. Nailed to the spot, she felt panic swell in her stomach and rise to the surface of her skin to form a sheen of cold sweat. Dear Merlin, what was she going to do? She couldn’t hear him, she couldn’t see him – scratch that, she couldn’t see, period –, time was flying by and she was stuck in the middle of nowhere while Malfoy was doing who knows what if he even was capable of doing anything and for the love of Merlin what was she going to…

_ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?_

Oh, right.

“Lumos Maxima!”

What was intended as a strong incantation to calm her down instead came out as a strangled whisper that only sent another wave of shivers down her spine. At the very least, the tip of her wand lit up in a ball of delightfully bright cool light, chasing the darkness back to the corners.

Hermione lifted the wand high up, allowing the conjured light to pool around her in a wider circle, and for the first time since she was ten took a proper look at the place she’d Apparated them to.

On one side of the large cavern where she was standing, she saw the opening of the tight, relatively low-ceilinged tunnel which she knew led to the mouth of the cave and outside. On the side directly opposite the exit tunnel, the cavern seemed to narrow a little but going by the barely noticeable breeze tickling her cheek, it wasn’t likely to end there just yet. The light of her wand couldn’t reach the wall Hermione was facing but the one closer to her behind her back was perfectly unremarkable. She would have to crouch down to explore the corners where the ceiling was only a couple of feet high, but it rose sharply and in the middle formed a rough arch of jutting slates over a patch of dirt dotted with stones large and small.

There was no sign of Draco Malfoy anywhere.

This was not good. This was, in fact, very much not good. This was as far from good as anything could get.

There had been two people, fighting and shouting and making so much noise it was a miracle they didn’t wake up some grumpy troll grandma who would then have proceeded to bang their heads together as her own inarticulate way of telling them to kindly shut it. There had been so much racket; the place had no right being this quiet now. And yet it was.

There had been two people in the cave. Until there weren’t.

Hermione quickly squashed a new swell of panic threatening to engulf her, and instead forced herself to call on her old trusted weapon, the reliable tool of logical thinking.

In the little-known book of combat spells she skimmed during a long dull night of researching yet another leg of the largely fruitless Horcrux hunt, the curse she’d thrown Malfoy’s way was offered as a legal alternative to Cruciatus, making her discount it immediately – which was, of course, precisely why the spell wormed its way into her memory. Hermione couldn’t remember much about what it was designed to do but she was fairly certain it was not supposed to make a person go poof.

If Malfoy had Disapparated, she would have heard the accompanying pop. He could have used a Portkey to get away if he had been in a sufficiently unfit state for splinching to be a risk, but the only way he would possess such a device was if some adult who fought on You-Know-Who’s side gave it to him. Portkeys were difficult to create and functioned as a one-time transport to a fixed location, in this case presumably to an emergency safe house. Generally, they were not supposed to be used whenever it stroke the owner’s fancy. Hermione doubted that Malfoy would be rash enough to trigger a Portkey if it meant having to come up with an impromptu explanation as to what kind of danger necessitated him to waste a measure of last resort; something that would obfuscate the fact that he actively sought out Harry Potter’s mudblood and offered to collaborate with the Order of Phoenix.

Which left only one solution: the spell she used must have been powerful enough to lift Malfoy off his feet and fling him deeper inside the cave. That would explain why he was nowhere to be seen within the roughly twenty-feet wide circle of light Hermione’s wand was producing. It logically followed, then, that he still was somewhere nearby.

Why there were no sounds of rapid breathing or gasping or swearing, that Hermione adamantly refused to ponder.

Steeling herself for whatever was awaiting her, she stepped forward to where the cavern gradually narrowed, taking care to avoid the slimy protruding stones as much as possible. It was a slow, treacherous journey. She slipped and almost fell twice in as many yards, and after a minute decided to just wing it and take a detour across a dirt patch, closer to the wall on her right. She would be of no use to anyone if her life tragically ended during an epic neck-breaking duel with a bloody rock.

Hermione noticed the previously dark wall pop up in her peripheral vision as the light of her wand fell on it, and raised her head as soon as she was reasonably certain she wouldn’t lose balance on some hidden obstacle.

It took her a couple of seconds to fully process what exactly she was seeing.

The splatter of blood was about inch thick at its widest end and tapered rapidly downwards as it went, a morbid sign aimed in the direction she was heading. It was surrounded by a couple of thinner splashes and more droplets of various sizes than she had the stomach to count. At the point where the arched ceiling sharply angled and lowered, the bloody arrow left the wall entirely and continued on the ground, pointing ahead in a line of smaller and smaller drops as if a band of scuttling dwarfs had marched there.

_Oh no, oh no, no, no, no no nonononono…._

She’d wanted to fight him but not to hurt him, no, she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, Hermione never really _wanted_ to hurt anyone, that hadn’t been her intention, she never consciously thought about hurting people, slapping them as the self-serving bigoted ferrets that they were, sure, but not cursing them into oblivion, no matter how bad they were, but now she has, Merlin, she has, all this blood and he was not making a peep, oh God, where was he and why was he not making a single solitary peep?

As if Hermione’s earlier inability to produce a sound was caused by her voice gearing up for the moment when it would matter the most, a scream tore out of her throat without her really intending for it to: “Malfoy!”

And then at last, a shuffle coming from not too far ahead.

Forgetting all about being careful, Hermione broke into a run, her thoughts consumed by guilt. Malfoy was hurt, he was seriously hurt because she hurt him, she lost control and hurt him, and he may now be dying because of it, she didn’t mean to, she really didn’t mean to, she had just been so angry and frustrated and needed a punching bag, but not like this, Merlin, never like this…

Malfoy’s crouching figure came into view just then and Hermione immediately stopped at the sight of him, finally remembering what that blasted curse-book said about that blasted spell.

 

 

> _“This little minx of a hex hits your opponent with a brief flash of mind-numbing pain, without all the pesky hassle of having to book a life-long stay at the Azkaban Prison. Particularly useful for new arrivals at the arena of combat, considering that an improper form still has a high chance of yielding a desirable result, albeit slightly altered.”_

Apparently, Rosmerta Kettleburn’s _Outdarking Dark Wizards with Borderline Dark Magic_ was of the opinion that “brief”, “mind-numbing”, and “slightly altered result” meant “blowing up a body part”.

The left side of Malfoy’s face where the spell hit him looked like it had literally exploded. A good chunk of his left ear was gone and the previously white hair on his temple was now soaked in blood. The skin of his cheek was partly sticking out and partly peeled off completely in a wide gaping gash that ran from his forehead and over the lid-free eye, all the way down to the side of his neck, revealing wet naked muscle marred with deep scratches. The dark blue jacket he was wearing was damply glistening in the wandlight and the white shirt underneath bore splotches of red. Blood was also on Malfoy’s trousers and on the ground around him; in fact, it looked like he was sitting in a veritable pool of it.

Hermione struggled to breathe. She was the one responsible for this. She was the one who did this to him.

The injury must have been causing him terrible pain, yet he was sitting on the ground, staring down, not making a sound, completely immobile as if carved from stone. Why on earth wasn’t he moving?

 _You idiot!_ Mentally scolding herself, Hermione realized that a wound of this size and magnitude, inflicted on this particular part of his body, could have very well sent Malfoy into a mental shock. If he was here all this time, alone in the dark, then it was quite possible he was completely unaware of his circumstances to the point where he could easily ignore having half his face torn off.

She made towards him. “Malfoy, I’m so, so sorry, I never intended for this to happen, I’m so sorry, I have Dittany.” Hermione knew she was rambling but now that she found her voice again, it seemed like a good idea to use it. “Just a second and it will be as if none of this ev…”

“Imperio.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hermione stopped mid-sentence and her eyes widened in horror.

When Barty Crouch Jr. put her under the Imperius Curse in the fourth year and told her to make a little speech in front of the class, the experience was like being gently pulled into a sea of sweet-smelling honey. Hermione was overwhelmed by a magnificent relief when her sense of responsibility disappeared into thin air, a calm presence in her brain lulling her into giving up control like the burden that it was. Consequently, she was comfortable turning toward her guffawing classmates and pontificating with a distant smile on her lips about how being book smart is of course nice and good but it won’t deliver you the results all by itself.

This time was different. This time, having her free will snatched away felt like being dunked into a giant roaring cauldron full of red boiling rage, with no way to fight back against the wave after wave of blazing hatred that kept crashing over her and pushing her ever deeper. Malfoy was livid, focused entirely on his sense of having been wronged and wanting her to fully experience every miniscule turn of his heightened emotions that kept circling around one focal point like a kettle of hungry vultures.

_That fucking bitch, that fucking bitch, thatfuckingfuckingbitch…_

He wanted Hermione to be afraid of him, to be aware of how completely helpless she was if he decided to harm her as much as she’d harmed him.

Rooted to the spot, Hermione could do nothing but let out a terrified whimper.

Then, a voice spoke clearly in her head. _“Enough waving wands for today.”_ The sound of his firm control, contrasted with the hell of unleashed fury whirling all around her, only served to scare Hermione further. _“You won’t be needing yours anymore. Throw it away.”_

Frightened beyond her wits now, she felt her right hand rise as if on its own and then stop, suspended perpendicularly to her body. Surrounded by swirls of wrath as she was, letting go of her wand was the last thing Hermione wanted. The wand was her lifeline, the object of her quickly shrinking hope that she’d be able to break free from Malfoy’s tight hold. Without it, she’d be left with nothing but the furious thoughts stabbing at her from every angle.

Hermione flicked her wrist, and with the sound of wood hitting rocky ground somewhere to her right, the cave was plunged into darkness again.

But that one brief moment of defiance was apparently enough for Malfoy. The flames of anger that were consuming Hermione’s brain roared up, and the next thing she knew, the voice in her head was saying: _“Take off your shoes. Socks too.”_

An anguished sound of fear was her only show of resistance as an invisible hand pushed her down and forced her to do as he said.

Shrouded in the dark, Malfoy mumbled a spell that transfigured stones into wood. One whooshing sound later, and the cave was flooded with the warm flickering glow of a small campfire. Hermione would have rejoiced at this if it weren’t for the enraged presence furiously tearing at her mind, or the dead expression in Malfoy’s eyes that no amount of dancing light seemed to make alive. Seated a couple of feet in front of her, he was staring absently into the middle distance, the strange harmony of his shredded face and stiff posture making him look like a reanimated corpse.

_“Find a rock and stand on it so that you’ll face me.”_

As Hermione’s body stepped towards a moderately sized stone that didn’t seem too wobbly, the combined power of helplessness and fearful anticipation almost prevented her from noticing that the vial of Dittany flew out of her pocket and into his waiting hand. The soles of her bare feet met cold slimy surface, and as she struggled to maintain balance, Hermione silently screamed through the maelstrom of Malfoy’s rage that for the love of God, just glance up and _look_ at me.

She heard the order the moment he opened the vial and poured most of its contents onto his torn flesh, inducing it to start repairing itself immediately.

“ _Now, be a good girl and stand on the tips of your toes for me.”_

Gasping for breath, Hermione obediently raised herself on the balls of her feet, and as she swayed forward to cover that one crucial inch, putting the entirety of her body weight onto the tips of her regrettably ungroomed toes, she was overcome with a pain so sharp she almost missed Malfoy speaking up for the first time since he subjugated her to his will.

“I’m joining the Order.”

… oh God it hurt, it hurt, it hurt so, so much…

“Tell whomever is in charge.”

… it was like the nails of her big toes were bending and ready to break off…

“I’m not going to fight for your side.”

…her thighs were screaming for relief…

“But I will spy for you.”

... the overloaded bones in her toes would snap any second now…

“I’m going to be meeting with you exclusively.”

… pain was shooting from the inner sides of her feet to the middle of her soles…

 “You will not request specific information.”

… her calves were being slowly stretched to tear in half…

“You’ll take whatever I give you and be happy about it.”

… and the raging landscape of his mind may have calmed but the pain, oh Merlin, the searing pain, wait…

 “After the war is over, I’m getting a full pardon and so is my mother.”

… his mind was getting clearer, the Dittany was working and his mind was getting clearer…

 “I expect you’ll want to make sure I’m not trying to screw you over. Veritaserum should give you all the answers you need.”

… all she had to do was wait a couple of seconds more until the potion took full effect, and he’d release her…

She nearly lost balance, and as a flash of agony shot through her toes, making itself at home deep in the bones of her feet, Hermione realized she couldn’t keep this up much longer. The stance Malfoy forced her into wasn’t meant to be held for minutes on end, let alone by someone not trained to do it, not wearing proper footwear, and struggling to remain stable on a bloody rock. The arches of her feet felt like they were about to snap, her tendons were seriously over-stretched, and somebody was undeniably driving splinters under her nails. The Dittany would take at least another thirty seconds to heal Malfoy fully, and there was no way on earth Hermione could bear this torment that excruciatingly long. If he didn’t let her go now, right now, she would fall down and most likely break something – unless a muscle or tendon ruptured first, in which case she would definitely fall down and break something.

And then an idea came, so wonderful it almost made her cry tears of joy. Malfoy told her to climb on the rock and stand on her tiptoes, but he didn’t tell her how long she was supposed to stay that way, or if she even had to at all. Nothing in his words implied she couldn’t take a break. Maybe if she relaxed her muscles and lowered herself to the ground very very slowly, he wouldn’t notice and she would be able to exploit this loophole while technically still complying with his order; she could wait this out until the healing potion did its work and made him come to his senses…

Malfoy held something up between his fingers. “I trust you know how _this_ works.”

The galleon gleamed gold in the light of the fire before it flew into the air and landed at her feet with a clink.

“The serial number is the day and time, the place of issue the location where we’ll meet. You’ll use the coin only when absolutely necessary. I’ll use it whenever I want and you’ll be there, even if those two muppets of yours are dying of brain damage, and if you move before I tell you to, I swear to Merlin, Granger, you can go find the nearest cliff and jump from it.”

The words slashed through her hopes like a knife through butter. Stopping her descent immediately, Hermione gave a sob of utter desperation as her body resumed its previous position.

Malfoy went on, the Dittany almost finished knitting his flesh back into what looked like a perfectly normal face, but Hermione’s stomach was doing one flip after another and blood was roaring in her ears and she couldn’t hear anything he was saying anymore because the tendons in her feet were going to pop and the joints of her toes were twisting to the side and her calves strained under the pressure and her thighs were on fire and she really needed to step down but she couldn’t because then she would have to find a cliff and jump from it but she really really needed to because she couldn’t take this any longer it was physically impossible to maintain this position any longer but she had to but she couldn’t she had to step down right now but she couldn’t she had to she couldn’t she had to…

Think about something else, think about something else, think about something, think about something, something, anything else…

  _…. Mr. Malfoy, I believe your considerable skill at potion-brewing might help Miss Granger perform in a moderately successful manner in this year’s OWLs…_

 _… glad to see you’re getting used to a life of abject poverty ahead of time, Granger, there’s no way Weasley’s replacing those tatters of_ Hogwarts: A History _until your fiftieth anniversary…_

_… though I don’t dare expect much more than a modest improvement that would allow her to rise above the level of acceptable mediocrity..._

_… Miss Granger I’m positively shocked by your behaviour, you of all people…_

_… it_ might _turn out to be a smaller waste of your time than if I paired you up with Longbottom for a study group …_

_… honestly Hermione, nobody here understands how you keep dealing with that git…_

_… I would have expected you to know not to cast spells at Mr. Malfoy_ in the library _…_

_… yeah, Fred and George have already opened a betting pool to see who kills whom first…_

_… were you replaced as the Slytherin Seeker because your father couldn’t mail the bribes from Azkaban, or have you just become too enamoured of failing in general…_

_… for fuck’s sake yes, it’s a project for extra credit, and no, I don’t think Transfiguration – which is your answer for everything, by the way – is going to do the trick…_

_… maybe I was kicked in the head by a hippogriff but you’ve been worrying me lately…_

_… don’t leave the Gryffindor Tower tonight…_

_… well if the great Draco Malfoy asks for my help, who is a mere mudblood like me to say no to the countless hours of research…_

_… discuss your impressively dysfunctional friendship until Weasley’s freckles turn into galleons for all I care…_

_… are you all right…_

_…. just don’t leave the tower tonight..._

The nail on her big toe snapped off and Hermione shrieked in pain.

Malfoy’s head shot up and he finally looked at her, his face healed completely now. “Shit!” Jumping to his feet, he set out running in her direction. “Finite Incantatem!”

Feeling him be ejected from her mind was like throwing open large windows to let a gust of ocean breeze into a stuffy room. The world around her stopped swirling, the pressure lifted, and she was once again blissfully, gloriously alone in her own head, with her own emotions.

As she lost balance and came tumbling down, only to be caught and gently sat down by Draco bloody Malfoy who’d hurried to her like Prince Charming bursting from his torture dungeon, Hermione came to the conclusion that said emotions now consisted mostly of anger and hurt.

No more than two minutes could have passed from the moment he put her under the Imperius curse to the moment he released her from it, but Hermione felt like she would never walk again.

“Granger, are you…”

“Don’t touch me!” she croaked, shoving Malfoy away as hard as she could which, admittedly, wasn’t very hard considering her mounting sense of exhaustion. She was sorely tempted to start shuffling towards the wall where she remembered her wand should be, but on second thought decided against it as her burning desire to see how long it would take for Malfoy’s pants to turn brown was what got her into this mess in the first place.

Staring at her with wide-open eyes, Malfoy looked disturbingly contrite. It made for a very unusual sight and Hermione didn’t like it one bit. She may have foregone round three of their brawl but that didn’t mean the amateur torturer had any right to make her feel anything that didn’t qualify as barely concealed wrath.

He reached towards her and she saw he was holding the bottle of healing essence in his hand. There still was a little bit left at the bottom.

“For the nailbed – the Dittany will close the wound and make the skin grow back. Not the nail, though; that would require a more potent, regrowing potion.”

Hermione snatched the medicine from his fingers. “Yes, thanks for the much needed lesson, professor.” Hissing in pain, she uncorked the tiny vial, poured the remaining couple of drops on her toe, and watched the raw exposed flesh disappear under a fresh layer of soft skin. “What would I have done with myself if you weren’t here to provide me with obvious information?”

Uncomfortable silence set in. Weak as a kitten, Hermione tried to busy herself with pulling on her socks, putting on her sneakers, tying the laces, massaging the screaming muscles in her legs, remembering whose turn it was to prepare dinner at the safe house tomorrow – anything that didn’t involve having to pay attention to the uncomfortably looking man sitting across from her.

“Granger, I’m sor…”

“Are we done here?”

Malfoy looked as if she slapped him for a split second, and Hermione almost wished she’d let him finish. The thing was, though, she wasn’t ready for this. She’d had more than her fill of Draco Malfoy for one day; she was completely unprepared for having an honest heart-to-heart with him, especially after a session of face-ripping and torture, and most of all didn’t want to think of him as someone capable of being genuinely apologetic. That would make it too hard to hold onto certain emotions she desperately had to hold onto if she were to stay vigilant and make it impossible for him to use their future partnership as a means to double-cross her and her friends.

The stung look disappeared and was replaced with a mask of haughty disinterest, as if a curtain came down over Malfoy’s eyes. “Unless you have any questions, naturally.”

Unless she had any… Was he serious? Of course she had questions. She had so many questions it was a miracle the cave wasn’t resounding with the echo of them buzzing inside her head, but she didn’t care to discuss them, here or now or with him, not when she was on the verge of having an emotional breakdown. And to be honest, none of her questions pertained to the logistics or security of their future cooperation. It was safe to say that the conversation about what made Malfoy decide that the best chance at saving his own arse lay with spying on the most dangerous wizard the world had ever known, and to do it for people he utterly loathed no less, could wait until a day less filled with stomach-churning excitement.

“No, I don’t have any bloody questions,” she spat. “Better slither back to your master and make up for the time you lost by not prostrating before him. And don’t bother me unless you can actually provide me with something useful.” Showing him the coin he’d given her, she added: “Preferably not something that those intellectually superior to you could have easily achieved by themselves.”

He tried to hide it but the flinch was irrefutably there, and Hermione cringed inwardly at her words. But then Malfoy gave a barely perceptible nod, got up from the ground, and set off towards the wall of the cave before Hermione could even start to think about why on earth she was feeling so bloody ashamed.

She couldn’t allow him to leave like this, regardless of what had happened between them. Yes, he was a prejudiced bastard who tore others down for superficial reasons in order to feel better about himself; yes, the beliefs he espoused were _the_ source of why people like her or Justin Finch-Fletchley or the Creeveys were being hunted; yes, he was an ingratiating coward who cared about nothing other than saving his own skin, damn anyone who weighed him down or stood in the way of quick retreat; and no, they most emphatically didn’t have a reason or obligation to be friendly, if being friendly was even possible for them now. But on the other hand he did take a tentative step towards changing sides, even though it was likely not inspired by any serious rethinking of his values, and that had to count for something, it just had to.

And most importantly, they couldn’t work together if they were constantly _this_ close to tearing the other person’s head off. Sooner or later, something had got to give.

Hermione shouted before she realized she was doing it. “Malfoy!”

He didn’t turn to face her, but he did stop walking away.

“Malfoy…”

She suddenly had no idea how to put all she was feeling into something as constricting as words.

_Apology accepted._

W _e’re square._

_Be careful._

She fixed him with a glare. “Since we’ve progressed to Unforgivables already… I won’t be holding back if you try pulling something like this ever again, or if I have even an inkling of a suspicion that you betrayed me and the people I care about.”

Covering the last few feet in his long stride and bending down to fish Hermione’s wand from among the rocks that were piled by the cave wall, Malfoy picked the wand up and briefly looked back at her before tossing it in her general direction.

“Likewise, Granger.”

And with that, he cast a cleaning charm on himself, turned at the spot, and Disapparated, leaving Hermione to stare at the empty space he occupied a mere second ago.

Of course the bloody prat had to have the last bloody word.


End file.
